“It is his doing,” Mishka condescended to explain. “His and my father’s. He gives the word and the money, and my father and those under him do the rest. They try to teach these lazy swine to work for their own sakes,—to make the best of their land; it is to further that end that all the new gear is coming. They will have the use of it—these pigs—for nothing. They will not even give thanks; rather will they turn and bite the hand that helps them; that tries to raise them out of the mud in which they wallow!”
He spat vigorously, as a kind of corollary to his remarks.
As he spoke we were skirting a little pine wood just beyond the village, and a few yards further the road wound clear of the trees and out across an open plain, in the centre of which rose a huge, square building of gray stone, crowned with a cupola that gleamed red in the rays of the setting sun.
“The castle!” Mishka grunted.
“It looks more like a prison!” I exclaimed involuntarily. It was a grim, sinister-looking pile, even with the sun upon it.
Mishka did not answer immediately. There was a clatter and jingle behind us, and out of the wood rode a company of horsemen, all in uniform. Two rode ahead of the rest, one of them the Grand Duke himself.
Mishka reined up at the roadside, and sat at the salute, and I followed his example.
The Duke did not even glance in our direction as he passed, though he acknowledged our salute in soldierly fashion.
We wheeled our horses and followed well in the rear of the imposing escort,—a whole troop of cavalry.